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Black Caps batsmen need to step up

You suspect Mohammed Shami, Bhuvneshwar Kumar, Yuzvendra Chahal, Kuldeep Yadav and company have been sleeping all right.

There must be some destinations, and batting line-ups, that keep India's
white-ball bowlers awake at night, but New Zealand doesn't appear one
of them.

Bowlers the cricket world over hate being embarrassed. They fear that
big bloke, with the big bat, who takes them for 30 in a One-Day
International over.

Clive Lloyd, who captained the West Indies to two Cricket World Cup
titles, was talking the Black Caps up the other day. Speaking to English
media, Lloyd nominated New Zealand as one of the genuine contenders
when the world cup takes place later this year.

That's a view that would definitely be echoed here, if just a little
more quietly in the wake of Wednesday's eight wicket defeat to India in
Napier.

New Zealand were bowled out for just 157, having won the toss and
batted, and responded post-match by blaming the pitch. They'd expected
the traditional McLean Park belter, captain Kane Williamson said, but
were instead presented with something more "two-paced.''

By the time they'd sussed that out, it was too late.

Batsmen obsess over pitches. They study them and stroke them, cast their
mind forward to how much pace and bounce they'll produce and what a
competitive total might be.

The Black Caps thought there were runs in that pitch and, when they
didn't score them, fell back on the tired cliché about the ball coming
through at different paces.

What that 157 really highlighted was that if Williamson or Ross Taylor
don't make substantial scores, there's a reasonable chance the team will
be dismissed cheaply.

There's also very little threat coming from the middle order while Jimmy
Neesham recovers from a hamstring strain and Colin de Grandhomme
carries the drinks.

Starting at the top, Martin Guptill and Colin Munro can do spectacular things on their day.

Munro is never going to be pleasant on the eye, but he can hit the ball hard and into weird areas.

New Zealand have treated him very well, allowing him to fail and not
stifling his strengths. At some point, though, he has to deliver or else
the solidity of Tom Latham will be required instead.

Guptill's batting is often beautiful, but he can be a man for the
smaller occasion. Present him with a modest attack and he'll make
mincemeat of them. His challenge is to get big runs on a big stage,
against a big team.

Williamson and Taylor are all-time New Zealand greats and then there's
the supporting cast we had at McLean Park of Latham, Henry Nicholls,
Mitchell Santner and Doug Bracewell.

Some very tidy, talented players there, but none who are keeping bowlers up at night.

Sri Lanka's Thisara Perera is not among world cricket's elite batsmen,
but he has a great eye, huge strength and provides a practical, and very
recent, example of what power hitting can do to an opponent.

His ODI scores of 140 and 80, then 43 in the one-off Twenty20 clash,
were ultimately for nought. The rest of Sri Lanka's batsmen didn't do
enough to support Perera and all three games were lost.
But, boy, did he put a fright through the Black Caps' bowling attack.

That innings of 140, from 74 balls, didn't just freak the bowlers out either.

The team's catching turned to custard, such was the anxiety caused by seeing the ball regularly clubbed out of the park.

Is Latham is any danger of doing what Perera did? What about Nicholls? Santner? Bracewell?

We're told that with the exception of Bracewell, who will face
challenges from de Grandhomme and Neesham for his spot, that Wednesday's
line-up in Napier was New Zealand's best.

That might well be true.

India are here for various reasons but, from a Cricket World Cup perspective, it's to expose frailties in the Black Caps' game.

Certainly better now, than in June and July.

We all want the team to succeed; they're an admirable bunch, who play
the game in a spirit that reflects well on the nation, but that doesn't
mean they're infallible.